GBI updates subsea cable meshed Smart Network

Oct 26, 2023

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Gulf Bridge International (GBI) is updating the North Route to improve route diversification and enhance the resilience of internet connectivity to and from the region.

The North Route now also connects the Gulf to Europe through Iraq, and will be able to leverage a wider range of terrestrial networks established by GBI and its partners. By circumventing the Arab peninsula completely, it also significantly shortens latency – with latency between Europe and the Gulf data centres reduced by 40ms. In addition, adding diversification to existing North Route paths through Iran provides redundancy which means users remain connected in the case of outage.

The enhancement of the North Route increases the overall resilience of GBI's Smart Network. This also includes the South Route, which connects the Gulf to Europe via the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean. The company says that the move is a welcome development for telecommunications, cloud, gaming, and internet service providers (ISPs) in the Gulf region as data demands on data cables reach an all-time high with mission-critical applications require expanding bandwidth, and new low latency-dependent technologies such as 5G, IoT and AI move into the mainstream. It will also help the region prepare to meet the surge in internet traffic anticipated around the World Cup 2022 in Qatar which will kick-off in November.

Brendan Press, CCO of GBI, says: "It's an adage as old as time: don't put all your eggs in one basket. Companies must shift away from overreliance on the same cable routes as that can produce bottlenecks and potential outages. They must work with providers that can provide diversification and, therefore, assurance that connectivity will always be available whatever the situation. By diversifying our North Route so that it now also passes through Iraq, we are providing that assurance. When you consider that we also have our South Route that runs through Egypt, we can confidently say our Smart Network is playing a critical role in keeping the world connected and is helping to propel the region into a global connectivity hub."